The Freedom Tower

Freedom Tower designer David Childs has a new commission. Consulting Design Partner David Childs will team up with roger Duffy to design a Lake Placid branch of the Adirondack Museum. The branch will include an 8,000 square foot space for permanent and changing exhibits, educational programs, office space and storage.

The writers at “Webmerica.org” have a complaint.
“The name Freedom Tower is kind of dumb,” they say. The “World Trade Center” had global meaning,” according to the site’s bloggers.
The World Trade Center was a crossroad for world commerce, a place where world-size problems were pondered if not solved. Agreed. But Freedom Tower, they say “just evokes that same, stupid naming streak that’s been going on ever since the creation of the “Department of Homeland Security.”
I can’t say I agree 100% but I must say they’ve got something if we’re talking about that God awful Homeland Security Department. An investigation of the blunders it has hatched in the short time its been around would reveal more than a troubled nation like ours could stand right now.
Was Homeland was really the best word they could’ve come up with? Webmerica asks. “How about the Department of National Security, or Domestic Security… just something to give it a little FBI or CIA feel. Homeland is pretty much the dumbest word they could’ve used … makes the whole organization seem like kind of a joke next to something like the Defense Intelligence Agency, or the National Security Agency.
So, now they’re doing it again, with the Freedom Tower… Do we really need the word “Freedom” in the title to know what it stands for? So, I will put forth this notion: We are not all morons! These names seem almost “Kid Friendly,” when they should strike fear in the hearts of our enemies, or at the very least, command a modicum of respect.”
Lets be clear about this business of striking fear in our enemies, no one with an ounce of integrity is afraid of that big bad wolf America. And no American has a dog in that fight either. That approach has already cost of more then we can afford to squander.

Like the character in the film, Groundhog Day starring Bill Murray, the recent discovery of more human remains has created a nightmarish problem for some families of 9/11 World Trade Center victims. While some families have mourned the fact that they have never been notified by authorities that remains of their loved one have been found, others have a uniquely different problem, according to a recent story in Metro New York.
“Some family members who never received any remains are uncertain about what they want to find,” the story said. “Others, who have already buried what remains were found, are faced with the possibility of another funeral or burial.
“I’ll tell you the truth, I couldn’t go through exhuming his body again,” said Bruce De Cell, whose son-in-law, Mark Petrocelli, was killed in the north tower. The family has received remains five times and buried him twice, the last time in 2003. “As far as I’m concerned, I hope I don’t hear any more.”

Salon.com says that Tower 7 seems to be a monument to grace. Those are Salon’s words not mine. “The original 47-story granite-and-glass building that stood across Vesey Street from the Trade Towers disappeared into the ground at 5:21 p.m. on 9/11. The new tower, which opened in May, is an elegant glass parallelogram that now dominates ground zero.
“Like the Freedom Tower, 7 also sits atop an enormous concrete vault (it’s not there for blast resistance but because it houses a Con Edison substation that powers much of Lower Manhattan). But from the street, the concrete isn’t visible. Childs has covered the base with handsome stainless steel panels designed by the celebrated TriBeCa designer James Carpenter. Carpenter also designed the tower’s exterior glass cladding, which surrounds its office space from the eighth story to the top.”
This is a tribute to a building that isn’t about to be built, or one no one seems willing and able to occupy. Tower 7 is up and open. The designer chose glass that’s low in iron, according to Salon and is coated with an anti-reflective material that keeps out radiant heat. “The glass is so transparent that at certain hours, when the sun hangs low on the horizon, Tower 7’s walls seem to disappear, and you can see through entire floors of the building.”

The Freedom Tower is a lot like the weather. Everybody talks about it. One of the many people who falls in this category besides me, is Nicole Gelinas of City Journal.
Gelinas says the Freedom Tower is a project that seems doomed to fail, not because building it is entirely a bad idea. She says the central problem with the building and the problems associated with occupying this 1,776 foot tall icon is that it is an icon many believe, rightly or wrongly, to be a target any self-respecting nut case who will have no choice but to take the shot at knocking down once it goes up.
Gelinas says the reconstruction of the other Ground Zero buildings will move ahead swiftly and whether these office buildings become successful business enterprise will be determined by the same factors that would affect any other new construction project in Manhattan – the strength or weakness of the real estate market in 2012. So. Gelinas is one of the few people talking about the Freedom Tower who suggests the Freedom Tower should be the last Ground Zero to go up. The hype surrounding the Freedom Tower, it seems, is doing more harm than even the most astute critics can imagine.

The only blunder that even comes close to this blunder is 911 itself.

“City and state officials are celebrating their commitment to fill space in the Freedom Tower. But there seems to be less cheering — and considerable distress — among people who might actually have to report for work every day in the symbolic replacement for the destroyed World Trade Center,” the New York Times reported.
How could every politician even remotely associated with the World Trade Center disaster and the reconstruction of Ground Zero have been so near sighted not to have realized that politics as usual in this case could not dissuade rational people from seeing this pink elephant in every room where the redevelopment of site has been discussed for the last five years.
Oh, they might have been able to get a clue when design after design was thwarted, turned down, twisted and rejected by even the most indifferent observer. There might have been some signals coming from firefighters who journeyed to this “job site” from firehouses around the world to search for the remains of 911 victims. They always brought the quiet dignity and sincerity few politicians can muster, even with the best flacks and handlers guiding their every move.
The governors of New York and New Jersey, the usually astute New York City Mayor Michael Blumberg and both the Republican and Democratic candidates running in the race for the top job in the Empire State all signed on to this Titantic blunder. Yesterday they committed themselves to sign leases to occupy one million square feet of the Freedom Tower of the more than two million square feet of space in this building developers have had mighty problems filling. When the governors and the mayor joined forced with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, they made one colossal blunder. They forgot to ask the people who work for them if they’d just go along for the ride.
Today, union after union, employees of agency after agency said no, they would not go to work if their bosses paid them to work in the Freedom Tower.
Oh my God, what a blunder these blockheads have committed. The tax collector, the meter maids and the bean counters for the public agencies in charge of buying light fixtures say they’re not risking their lives for a paycheck from people who failed to protect their colleagues at least twice before at the same address where that gave blunder new meaning.
I see a flurry of news conferences being planned right now where the Pink Elephant sitting in the center of Ground Zero still won’t be discussed. Neither will an idea I heard this afternoon from a college student in Connecticut that seemed to make more sense than anything I’ve heard from the designers, the Port Authority and the developers, the mayor of the largest city in the world and everybody else sitting on what is probably the most expensive real estate in the world. I haven’t look close enough yet but yesterday one of the brains behind this blunder said they were renting space down there for about fifty bucks a square foot. You can’t rent a tree house in Arkansas for that kind of money, never mind in a highrise in New York, New York.
There’s a clue right there. Something’s up. Something big too.
A student in my class at Western Connecticut state university is the kind of student I love. She’s nervy, careful and measured in what she says, but when she’s sure, she squeezes off a head shot. Oh yes, she’d read the stories in yesterday news or at least heard what passes for broadcast news on CNN. No, it wasn’t CNN because she says she doesn’t have a television. She must have read it somewhere online because she pondered the idea of people moving into the Freedom Tower for a moment in class yesterday, then she quietly said something that sent that pink elephant scurrying from 306 White Hall in Danbury to a safer room on campus.
“No one in my generation is going to work in that building,” she said. “No one. Its too soon.”
A young man sitting behind her was visibly upset by what she said, so he spoke up too.
“Well me,” he said, “I’d work there. I’d work there and I’d dance on the roof.”
A roof that many believe will catch fire again, I said.
He didn’t flinch or bat an eyelash but he flashed me a look, an unmistakable look that another man would recognize immediately. It said “go ahead. I dare you to try it again. I dare you come back. I’ll be waiting for you this time.”
It was a threat and I knew it wasn’t aimed at me. It was a headshot too and if he had really been shooting, the shot would have been dead on and I know who he was aiming at and it wasn’t that pink ass elephant I saw scurring down White Street andd across the midtown campus heading for higher ground.

Gov. George Pataki says the Freedom Tower is America’s greatest symbol of “our freedom and independence.”
Critics overseas see it differently.
“Its lifts and stairwells are protected by walls of concrete and steel 60cm thick - robust enough to withstand a bomb blast, perhaps even a plane strike. It has wider exit stairs, better emergency systems and fireproofing. Its office floors sit on top of a concrete vault 24m high - not a security feature but accommodation for a key electricity substation,” says the Mail & Guardian online, Africa’s first online newspaper.
“The new 102-storey Freedom Tower will incorporate even more safety features. In response to the police’s comments, it is set quite a way back from the street on all sides, and surrounded by bollards. And, like 7 World Trade Centre, its 69 office floors will also sit on an impregnable base - this time purely for security reasons. The solid core of the base will be disguised by attractive prismatic glass panels that would shatter like a car windscreen in the event of a blast.
…To many, the last thing the Freedom Tower symbolizes is freedom,” the newspaper said. “This is not a problem unique to the World Trade Centre, of course. The US landscape has been transformed, post-9/11, by barriers, X-ray machines, screening facilities - the apparatus of counter-terrorism.”
This is so painfully true, it hardly bares mentioning but just had to be said.

The subject always comes up and winds up dominating conversations eventually. Will the new buildings going up on the World Trade Center site, the Freedom Tower and all the others, still stand in the event another terrorist attack sends airplanes crashing into them again?
“Patriotism has driven it from the start, with some inevitably kitschy results, starting with its height (1776 feet). The building is a solemn monument to the fallen, but also an obvious target, a test of our will and ingenuity to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself, says Lakshmi Sandhana, writing for Wired News.
“Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, or SOM, the architects designing the tower, have taken that imperative literally: If terrorists pilot a fully-fuelled commercial jet into their building, they believe it will stand.
“Based on the identified threats there wouldn’t be a disproportionate collapse of the structure,” says Carl Galioto, SOM’s technical partner. “In many cases there wouldn’t even be a distortion; key elements of the tower would not be deformed out of place. The tower’s steel frame is interconnected with beams and columns to redistribute loads in the event of an impact or blast so it remains standing, enabling occupants to leave safely.”
Its not supposed to happen anyway. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says so but they’ve been really busy trying to keep Mexicans from crossing the border.

If you just read the stories about the hustle and bustle of all the new downtown development, the Freedom Tower clearly seems like an omen for a bright future for the city of New York.
But if you examine what lies beneath the skin and design of the Tower, then walk through the city and simply glance at the perimeters of any significant public space today where government, commerce or trading goes on, the story changes radically.
City Hall is a bunker, barely visible from the sidewalks. The White House has been barricaded by slabs of concrete for a very long time. The United Nations has always been hidden by an iron gate on one side and the East River on the other.
Farhad Manjoo, writing recently for Salon.com, tells us that American architecture “is still reeling from the 9/11 attacks. Critics and architects say that security now trumps design, as barricades and mall-like plazas are sucking the soul out of urban life.
“Within a week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, officials at New York’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts set up a half dozen massive concrete freeway separators in a stately line across Josie Robertson Plaza, the complex’s main outdoor entryway. The security barricades, unsightly Jersey barriers, were intended to protect the center’s performance halls from a speeding truck bomb. Perhaps only the most unusually cultured of terrorists would want to hit Lincoln Center, which sits five miles north of ground zero on the Upper West Side of Manhattan — but in the tense aftermath of the attacks, no precaution seemed too much. Lincoln Center groundskeepers thoughtfully topped the Jersey barriers with colorful potted plants, a rehabilitation technique along the lines of pinning a tiara on Medusa. Almost five years have passed since the attacks. The barriers remain in place.
“To appreciate how America has changed since 9/11, walk slowly through any major city. What you’ll see dotting the landscape is the physical embodiment of fear. Security installations put up after the attacks continue to block public access and wrangle pedestrian traffic. Outside Manhattan’s Port Authority Bus Terminal, garish purple planters menace rush-hour pedestrian traffic. The gigantic planters have abandoned all horticultural ambition, many of them blooming with nothing more than trash and untilled dirt. “French barriers,” steel-grate barricades meant for controlling crowds, ring many landmark sites — including San Francisco’s Transamerica Building — like beefy bodyguards protecting starlets. Then there are the bollards, the cylindrical vehicle-blocking posts that are so pervasive you wonder if they’ve mastered asexual reproduction. In Washington, bollards surround everything. Not since Confederate Gen. Jubal Early attacked the city in 1864 has the nation’s capital felt so under siege.”

As the world prepares to mourn the tragedy of 9/11 for the fifth time and the Freedom Tower rises downtown, a government agency has released a fact-finding report dealing with alternative theories about the World Trade Center fires and collapse.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been investigating the collapse of the Twin Towers and produced a massive report explaining what went wrong. Their investigation stemmed from allegations and a growing skepticism among Americans that the official explanation were wrong. The investigation preceded a Scripps Howard Poll that shows that a third of Americans suspect the U.S. government “was complicit in the Sept 11 terror attacks,” according to a website called WorldNetDaily.com.
The full NIST report can be found at: http://wtc.nist.gov, all 43 volumes of it.